Niantic Is Changing Pokémon GO's Exclusive Mewtwo Raids, But How?

Paul Tassi
, ContributorNews and opinion about video games, technology and the internetOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Niantic

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To say that Exclusive Raids have not been well-received in the Pokémon GO community is something of an understatement. Fans have been bemoaning the hard-to-access raids from the start, claiming that they’ve raided endlessly without getting a pass during this painfully long beta test that seems like it’s never going to end.

Finally, Niantic is responding. It’s just a brief message relayed through their Twitter support page, but given how communicative Niantic is normally, it’s a ray of sunlight. Pokémon GO’s EX raids will be changing…somehow.

“Trainers, thank you for your feedback on EX Raid Battles. We're working to improve the invitation system based on what we heard from you.”

That is not terribly specific, but if we go through what most fans have been complaining about regarding the Exclusive Raid system, here are the highlights:

No indication of how much or often you have to raid in order to receive an invite. Some people may raid 50 times a week and won’t get a pass when a person who does 1 raid gets one.

Raid times that are during the workday or other events that are impossible to reschedule

Raid invitations given out when you’re traveling and are physically unable to return to the area to raid.

Raid invitations that are given out at ridiculous places like airports that are borderline impossible to get to, and will not attract enough players to do the raids.

Whatever fix Niantic comes up with will have to address most of these issues. The most pressing one by far is Pokémon GO players simply having no idea how to get a raid pass consistently. Part of this may be because this is a “beta test” in certain areas, but the areas are almost always unclear or unknown, and players have been fruitlessly just trying to raid a ton in order to magically secure a pass. A clearly defined set of stipulations or goals that will get you a raid pass would be useful, say, complete five raids in a week to get an EX raid pass for one of the gyms nearby.

Niantic

Pokemon GO

But I’m standing firm with what I’ve said all along: Exclusive Raids are stupid and should be cut from the game entirely. They do nothing but create problems, divide players and frustrate the playerbase, and serve no real purpose other than to create elitism in a game that’s supposed to be about fun for everyone.

If Niantic wants to make Mewtwo raids incredibly hard and incredibly rare, that’s great! I agree that that’s how they should be. But the EX raid pass system has been a disaster from start to finish, and I genuinely don’t know what it adds the game. I’m not sure why 1 or 2 Pokémon out several hundred needs to be locked into a special system like this. It seems like both a waste of Niantic’s time, who should be focusing on other issues with the game, and players’ time, as they raid endlessly for the off chance they might get a pass.

But Exclusive Raids do not appear to be going anywhere. Niantic says they’re making “improvements” to the EX raid system, so that means it’s sticking around in some form. There are many, many easy improvements they could make to the system, so I will be curious to see those, but I maintain that the best path forward is just killing the concept altogether and moving on. If the EX raid beta has proven anything, it’s that removal of the system entirely is probably the best course of action. Hopefully we’ll know more soon.